Blood Moon

by Graeme Reynolds

Sharing a house with others was harder than he’d expected. He’d been on his own from childhood, not daring to even make any close friends, let alone actually live with anyone. Now that he found himself co-habiting with two other people, he began to realise just how used to being on his own he’d become. Of course, there had been many times over the years where the loneliness had been crushing, and he’d wander around his house, not knowing what to do with himself. Now that he had company forced upon him, however, he couldn’t help but resent it, no matter how hard he tried not to. It didn’t help that Marie was such a damn slob. He loved her. Having someone there to talk to and curl up next to at night was amazing. It was a closeness he never thought he’d experience, and he cherished it. He just hadn’t expected it to be so difficult to allow someone into his life and to share his personal space.

  “Where the fuck did you find that?” said Marie from the doorway. She wore a pair of tracksuit bottoms and the oversized t-shirt she’d slept in. Her eyes were half-closed and her hair looked as if she’d been dragged backwards through a hedge. Marie, John had discovered, was not a morning person.

  He grinned at her. “I found it in the loft, along with a box of decorations. Apparently this place used to be a children’s home, and I thought it’d be nice to put them up.”

  Marie cast a quizzical eye at the tree. “You know that it’s bent? And you might have overdone the tinsel a bit.”

  John’s face fell. “I just wanted to try and brighten the place up. Make it feel a bit more like Christmas, you know?”

  Marie walked over and kissed him on the cheek. “It’s the thought that counts. Is there any coffee left?”

  “Yeah, there’s still some in the pot. It’s been there for a couple of hours, though. I can make a fresh one, if you want?”

  She shuffled out of the living room, towards the kitchen. “No, it’s alright. I could do with something strong enough to stand a spoon up in this morning. One bloody glass of wine and I still get a hangover. I am officially a lightweight. Where’s Daniel? I thought you’d have roped him into your little decorating project.”

  John stood back from the tree and tried to reposition it so the bend in the trunk was less visible. “He went shopping in Ross first thing. Said we needed a few things and he wanted to pick up a newspaper. Should be back soon. He’s been gone for a couple of hours now.”

  Even with his enhanced hearing, John couldn’t make out the details of Marie’s grunted response, but he heard the clink of china and the burble of coffee being poured, and figured that any further attempts at conversation were probably better off left until she’d caffeinated herself. She trudged out of the kitchen, mug in hand, and made her way back upstairs without another word. A few moments later, the hiss of the shower drifted down the stairs, and John turned his attention back to the Christmas tree.

  ***

  Daniel drummed his fingers against the steering wheel and sighed. The tractor ahead of him had blocked the single track road for over three miles now and showed no signs of turning off any time soon. Vehicles coming from the opposite direction had been forced to reverse back along the road, adding more delay to proceedings. He pushed the irritation down and tried to relax. No easy matter given what he’d found out that morning. Still, there were only a few more miles to go before he reached the stone bridge that marked the boundaries of the village, and then only another mile and a half before he reached the isolated cottage he’d been forced to co-habit with Marie and Simpson. If nothing else, the journey gave him time to gather his thoughts.

  The situation was a difficult one. His orders were clear. Marie and Simpson were to be executed on sight and their corpses disposed of. However, Krysztof and Lukas didn’t run the pack. Not yet anyway, despite the way they were behaving. While Michael lived, there was a chance that things could be turned around. If Michael had been killed by his captors though, or if the council voted to depose him as pack alpha, something that seemed increasingly likely as the days passed, he would have no choice but to carry out his instructions. His loyalties were, and would always be, to his pack. At least, if it came to that, he’d be able to make sure they were put to death quickly and painlessly. He owed Marie that much.

  The tractor turned off onto a side road as they reached the outskirts of the village, and Daniel breathed a sigh of relief. In reality, the village was little more than a collection of houses and farms, centred around an old church. There had been a public house at one time, situated next to the river, however it had long since been boarded up. Other than that, there was only a post office that opened for a few hours each morning and a small garage that survived by maintaining the agricultural vehicles for the nearby farms. Most of the houses seemed to be occupied by commuters, the array of BMWs and Audis parked on the neatly maintained driveways testament to the fact that most of the village’s original inhabitants had been priced out of the area. He doubted if there was much remaining by way of a community here anymore. The only focal point would be the church, where people would gather each Sunday to pay lip-service to the hymns and prayers before retreating back into the self-contained bubbles of their lives.

  He passed through the village, turning off onto a long gravel track that ran for half a mile across open countryside before it reached their cottage. Pheasants burst from the hedgerows before him, squawking their alarm at the intruder in their midst. They did this every time he drove through here, and their impromptu honour guard always made him smile. Besides, they also provided a useful early warning system in the case of unexpected visitors.

  The track branched off into a field where a flock of sheep huddled in the far corner, no doubt able to smell the wolves in their midst but unable to retreat any further from them. The day he’d arrived, one of them had attempted to throw itself across the cattle-grid to escape and had broken its legs as a result. He’d been tempted to take it up to the house, butcher the corpse and put it in the freezer, but decided against it. If the farmer had come up to the house, enquiring after his missing livestock, and he’d caught sight of either Marie or Simpson, then things could have become complicated. Better to let him find the creature where it lay. He had, at least, broken the animal’s neck to prevent it from suffering unnecessarily.

  The cottage came into view as he crossed the field. It had red sandstone walls with a grey slate roof and a partially rotted wooden conservatory that leeched the heat from the building in the evenings. Light flashed from the living room window, and another blazed from the double bedroom that Marie shared with Simpson. At least they were awake. He didn’t feel like breaking his news to Marie before she’d had at least one cup of coffee. The car rumbled across the cattle-grid separating the cottage from the field beyond, and he parked by the property’s rear door, retrieved two plastic bags of shopping from the passenger seat, then got out and went inside.

  Marie was walking down the stairs with a towel wrapped around her wet hair as he entered the hallway. Simpson seemed to have spent the morning turning the living room into a tasteless parody of ‘Santa’s grotto’. Daniel shook his head, disgusted.

  Marie smiled at him as she reached the bottom of the stairs. “Morning, Daniel. Everything alright?”

  He put the bags on the floor and removed two newspapers, putting them on the dining room table. “No, I’m afraid it’s not. We have a problem.”

  Simpson crossed the room and picked up the first paper, a copy of the Daily Mail. The headline read “Illegal Immigrant Werewolves on Benefits Stopped at Airport.” He sighed. “Well, that just ticks every bloody box, doesn’t it? The fucking Tories will love that, and the blue-rinse brigade will be up in arms. They seem to be more bothered by the fact that one of them claimed benefits than the fact that they were werewolves.”

  Marie picked up another paper and scanned the text, then looked up to Daniel with tears in her eyes. “Dmitri and Kasha? Do any of the reports say what happened to them? Are they okay?”

  “I don’t know. The tabloids have sensationalised their ac
counts so it’s difficult to understand exactly what happened. What is certain is that the situation is now so much worse than it was. People in the coffee shops and supermarkets were talking about little else.”

  Marie retrieved her laptop from under the empty box of decorations. After a few moments, a grainy video appeared on the screen, obviously taken on a camera-phone. It showed Dmitri, Kasha and their young son, Adam, fall to the ground, writhing in agony amidst a group of panicked travellers. Then Adam began to transform. Fangs burst from the boy’s mouth and hair surged from his pores. While the quality of the footage was poor, there was no question of what was happening. The image shook as the person filming was shoved out of the way by armed police who then opened fire on the three werewolves with submachine guns. Bullets tore into Adam, Dmitri and Kasha. The police clearly weren’t taking any chances with them and emptied their entire clips into the trio. Then the video ended. Marie stifled a sob and closed the lid of the laptop.

  “I… I knew them. Dmitri was like a father to me and Michael. They weren’t hurting anyone. They just lived here, quietly for years. And Adam was only a child. How could they do that?”

  Daniel put his hand on Marie’s shoulder. “They only saw the monster, Marie. They didn’t think of them as two parents with a child. They thought of them as wild beasts and put them down. We knew it would be like this. After what Connie did, how could they think otherwise?”

  “I know, but seeing it like that, reading those fucking rags that make it sound like some kind of massive victory, it… it makes me sick.” She got to her feet, jaw clenched and red-rimmed eyes blazing with fury. “I’m not leaving Michael in the hands of these fuckers. We need to accelerate our plans. God knows what they’ve been doing to him.”

  “We’ve been over this. It’s all Simpson can do to stand up, and your injuries need more time to heal as well.”

  Marie glanced at Simpson, then back to Daniel. “There’s a way to sort John out before the next full moon, and it’s not like he’ll be going into the base anyway, unless things go tits up.” She walked over to Simpson and put her hand on his shoulder. “If you’re up for it, we can have your injuries healed by lunchtime.”

  Daniel hadn’t expected that. “You can’t be serious? I know what you’re thinking and it could kill him. Please, for the sake of a few more weeks, think about what you’re suggesting.”

  Marie took Simpson’s hands in hers. “It’ll work. It won’t be nice, but it’ll work. And it’s our only chance of getting to Michael in time.”

  Simpson seemed to take a moment to consider it, then nodded. “Fuck it, I’ve spent the last month or more held together with stitches and I’m getting sick to death of it. What do I have to do?”

  “Okay, there’s a reason that injuries inflicted by another werewolf don’t heal until the next full moon. It’s to do with the curse, or whatever you want to call it. When a wolf causes an injury, the wolf spirit is passed along and, in a normal human, it turns them on the next full moon. In your case, you’re already afflicted, so your wolf fights against the new one and they cancel each other out until the moon rises and your wolf becomes powerful enough to defeat the other. You’ll still heal from normal injuries, though. So, in theory, if we cut out the wounds inflicted by the other werewolves, you should then heal normally.”

  Daniel shook his head. “In theory, Marie. Gregorz said he’d done it to himself after that Moonstruck in Prague took a bite out of his leg, but he also said that he almost bled out in the process. Simpson’s injuries are much more extensive than that. The damage we’d have to inflict would be dreadful. It may be too much for him to cope with.”

  “It’s up to you, John. I can’t force you to do this, and it’s really not going to be pleasant. But if it works, then we can move the plan forward and get Michael out of that hell-hole.”

  Simpson took a deep breath. “Okay, I trust you, Marie. Let’s do this. What do you need me to do?”

  Daniel shook his head. “All you’ll have to do is keep your wolf under control while we perform the operation. Unfortunately we don’t have any tranquilisers left. If we’re going to do this, then we should get on with it. Marie, can you get the plastic sheeting and rope out of the garage? I’ll make sure the kitchen knives are sharp enough.”

  Daniel took a small amount of satisfaction in the expression on Simpson’s face. He looked like he was about to throw up. Beads of sweat had broken out on his forehead, and his skin had turned pale and waxy. The stench of fear billowed from him. Daniel tried to give him a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry, we’ll do this as quickly as we can. You might want to get changed into something else, though. Something you don’t mind bleeding on.”

  23rd December 2008. Underhill Military Base, Sublevel Two. 18:20

  Phil balanced the tray of food on his left arm and brought his hand up to knock on the door, hesitating for a moment, unsure of what he’d say. He shook the feeling away and rapped twice on the plywood panel, then, without waiting for an answer, opened the door and stepped inside.

  The room was dark, but enough light seeped in from the hallway for him to make out the outline of Paul Patterson sitting on the metal framed bed. “Paul, I’ve brought you some food from the mess. Nothing fancy, just bangers and mash.”

  Paul didn’t turn around. “Just leave it on the table, thanks, Phil. I’m not that hungry, but I’ll have some later on.”

  Phil put the tray down and turned on the lights. The fluorescent bulb flickered into life, illuminating the bare walls with a harsh, unforgiving light. Paul squinted at him through red-rimmed eyes. He hadn’t shaved for a couple of days and Phil could smell him from where he stood. “I said I’m not hungry, Phil. Can you turn that fucking light off?”

  Phil moved to the bed and turned on the small lamp on the bedside cabinet, then extinguished the main light. “Better? Listen, mate, I know that it’s been shite, and I can’t imagine what you’ve been through, but you need to talk to someone. Just saying that I’m here if you need me.”

  “And what do you think I need to talk about, Phil? The fact that I stitched up my mates and got them killed, or that my wife and daughter got torn apart on the fucking Internet?”

  Phil sat down beside him. “Either. Both. Jesus, Paul, no one blames you for what happened. I probably would have done the same thing if that bitch was holding Sharon hostage. And you couldn’t have known what she’d do.”

  “Yeah, well I should have known. I should have told you all what was going on, and then maybe Rick and Mark might still be alive. We could have set something up, ambushed the bitch and…”

  Paul began sobbing. Phil had no idea what he could say that would even begin to help. Instead he put an awkward hand on the other man’s shoulder and waited for the tears to subside.

  “Christ, Paul, I don’t know what to say, but you can’t let this destroy you. Emma and Sam wouldn’t have wanted that. You need to try and get past this. Grieving is one thing, but you’re going to pieces here.”

  Paul looked up at him, his eyes glinting from the deep shadows cast by the lamp. “The Colonel wants me on their response unit, and I’ve said yes.”

  Phil’s eyes widened. “Are you sure that’s a good idea? I mean, fucking hell, Paul, after everything you’ve just been through, going back into the field’s the last thing you should be doing.”

  “Oh, it’s exactly what I need, and anyway, apart from Wilkinson and you, I’m the only person that’s had combat experience against these things. They need me, and if it means I get to kill some more of those monsters, then I’m all for it. Should save Durham Constabulary a shitload of therapist’s fees at the very least.”

  Phil could hardly disguise his shock at this. Paul Patterson was a wreck. No one in their right mind would give him a letter opener, let alone a firearm. He and Colonel Richards were going to have a fairly pointed conversation about this in the immediate future. He didn’t allow Paul to see his alarm, however, and instead tried to force a reassuring smile onto h
is face. “Don’t rush into it. That’s all I’m saying. The Colonel asked me and I told him to go fuck himself. I’m an old-fashioned copper. I hunt bad guys, not monsters. If I never see another of those things again it’ll be too soon. Just take some time to think it over. Please.”

  Paul’s lips curled into a humourless smile. “Too late for that, Phil. They’ve got an op coming up, and I’m going to be going in there with the rest of them. Those hairy fucking bastards aren’t going to know what hit them.”

  Chapter 4

  24th December 2008. Crickhowell, Powys, Wales. 19:45

  Rose Fisher swore under her breath as she pulled up outside of her rented flat and discovered that some inconsiderate bastard had parked their car in her space. Crickhowell was not a large town, and parking was difficult at the best of times. She’d hoped that at this time on Christmas Eve she might have had a chance to actually park outside her home, get inside and spend the night with a Chinese takeaway, a bottle of wine and the Gavin and Stacey Christmas Special. Apparently it was not to be. She’d have to park in the public car park behind the tourist information office, and then make the rest of the journey on foot. Feeling her mood rapidly deteriorate, she accelerated round the one way system, back onto the A40 and towards the town centre once more. She parked in an empty space close to the alleyway that led back to the High Street, not bothering to pay for a ticket. Not even the over-zealous local traffic wardens would be out at this time on Christmas Eve, and she had to go back to the base first thing in the morning anyway. All leave had been cancelled because of the werewolf situation. Better to work than sit around the flat on her own, getting fat on Christmas food and watching crap TV.

  A fine drizzle filled the air, forming orange coronas around the street lights. The moisture soaked through her uniform within seconds of leaving the car. It had been sunny and unseasonably warm when she’d headed out this morning, and she’d forgotten to pick her coat up from the kitchen work surface, an oversight she already regretted. Despite the rain, the pubs were already busy, overflowing with drunken merrymakers in Santa Claus hats who spilled out onto the streets, singing bawdy versions of Christmas carols. After the day she’d had fending off the lecherous advances of Steven Wilkinson, dealing with Doctor Channing’s emotional outbursts, and trying to come up with a mix of anti-depressants and anti-psychotics for Paul Patterson that wouldn’t render him a drooling mess, the last thing she wanted to do was fight off the wandering hands of amorous Welshmen on her way home. The first one to push things too far would learn a lesson he’d not soon forget.